We currently have a large billing dispute with BMG. In late 2003 my son opened a BMG Music account, and purchased a number of CDs. In early 2004 BMG started shipping many items that we never ordered. Those items were refused delivery, and the post office eventually returned them to BMG.
We ordered, paid for, and kept $666.89 worth of CDs. BMG billed us for a total of $4944.67, of which they eventually refunded $2201.89. Chase has apparently taken the remaining $2075.89 from them.
After first claiming that BMG had insufficient records to substantiate their bills, BMG eventually sent us an Excel spreadsheet showing the detailed accounting of their billing. There are two types of errors on their accounting that may be of interest to your office.
First, it is apparent that it is BMG policy to charge the credit card within one day of shipping the product. That is reasonable and standard practice. However, their own spreadsheet shows numerous instances of the card being charged 15 days after shipment. In almost all those cases, our card was charged on the day, or one day after, we closed this account. It seems possible that they are simply claiming they shipped the product 15 days earlier before the account was closed.
Second, BMG is charging substantially different amounts for the same item. For example, using the enclosed Excel spreadsheet, sort by selection number and look at selections D110094, D115600, D128170, D144984, D151670, D251301 and D251386. The price for the same selection number is as much as 700% higher on some days. In the case of item D251301, BMG is claiming to have shipped two copies of this item on the same day, 2004-04-10, one copy for $9.44, and the other copy for $37.45. We never ordered that item. Despite notifying BMG of those apparent errors in their accounting on 2004-09-25, BMG in their email response of 2004-09-29 refuse to correct the problem.
Does willful erroneous billing fall under the consumer fraud portion of New York state law?
bmgmusic.com is registered to:
BMG Direct, Inc. (BMGMUSIC-DOM)
6550 East 30th. Street
Indianapolis, IN 46219
US
Domain Name: BMGMUSIC.COM
Administrative Contact:
Agre, Beth (38383834P) domains@bmgdirect.com
BMG Direct, Inc.
28 E. 28th Street
New York, NY 10016-7944
US
212-555-1111
Note that they have lied on their domain registration statement, since
that phone number is bogus. However, it seems that New York state has
jurisdiction, since the administrative contact address is in New York.
www.bmgmusic.com currently uses ip address 170.171.250.20, which is owned by:
OrgName: Random House, Inc. OrgID: RANDOM-4 Address: 1745 Broadway City: New York StateProv: NY PostalCode: 10019 Country: US NetRange: 170.171.0.0 - 170.171.255.255according to their registration with ARIN. Again, New York has jurisdiction over that web server.